How to Close a Savings Account

Closing your bank account shouldn’t be difficult, but you will need to follow certain procedures to make sure any future financial transactions your savings account usually deals with are transferred to another account. It’s also necessary to check your banks closure procedure, so you don’t accidentally end up with an over-drawn status or leave a savings account open without realising you’ve done so.

Begin by looking into the agreement you first made with your saving account provider. Some banks insist savings accounts stay open, with regular deposits of a certain amount being entered, for a specific time period. This is often the case when a savings account accumulates a set rate of interest.

If this is the case resist entirely shutting down your account, and conform to the agreement made, other-wise the bank may consider your account to be in negative status when expected deposits aren’t entered. This could leave you with a poor credit rating.

If all is well and you are free to continue closing your savings account, the next step is to transfer any automatic withdrawals from your account to another. You will also need to stop any deposits being made into your savings account, and prevent any transfer of money from other accounts you have set up to automatically occur.

If you don’t have another account, but need to transfer transactions, you will need to set one up before you close your savings account, and not the other way around. Once you have done this transfer the balance from your old account into the one you want to keep open. Leave no money in the savings account, as it will be considered open other-wise.

Finally, check the procedure your particular bank uses when account holders wish to close a savings account. You may be required to put a request to close the account in writing, or to go into your bank and finalise closure personally.

Once your savings account has been closed, be sure to check it’s true closure status. If the bank or yourself has been remiss, a mistake could be made which affects your banking satisfaction detrimentally. This can happen if an account hasn’t properly closed down because the requests for transaction alterations haven’t taken effect at the right time.

Generally though, most customers find that closing their savings account is a smooth transaction. Once finalised, be sure to shred any material you don’t need for accounting purposes, so that you don’t get confused with retained bank cards and information.